ing, and was anxious
to keep its nose above water, it made the tremendous leap, and landed in
the middle of the inch-deep stream. It seemed astonished to find that,
instead of sinking over head and ears, only its toes were wet, gazed at
the shining water a few seconds, and then sprang to the shore safe and
dry through the dreadful adventure. All kinds of wild sheep are mountain
animals, and their descendants' dread of water is not easily accounted
for.

_August 11._ Fine shining weather, with a ten minutes' noon thunderstorm
and rain. Rambling all day getting acquainted with the region north of
the river. Found a small lake and many charming glacier meadows
embosomed in an extensive forest of the two-leaved pine. The forest is
growing on broad, almost continuous deposits of moraine material, is
remarkably even in its growth, and the trees are much closer together
than in any of the fir or pine woods farther down the range. The
evenness of the growth would seem to indicate that the trees are all of
the same age or nearly so. This regularity has probably been in great
part the result of fire. I saw several large patches and strips of dead
bleached spars, the ground beneath them covered with a young even
growth. Fire can run in these woods, not only because the thin bark of
the trees is dripping with resin, but because the growth is close, and
the comparatively rich soil produces good crops of tall broad-leaved
grasses on which fire can travel, even when the weather is calm. Besides
these fire-killed patches there are a good many fallen uprooted trees
here and there, some with the bark and needles still on, as if they had
lately been blown down in some thunderstorm blast. Saw a large
black-tailed deer, a buck with antlers like the upturned roots of a
fallen pine.

After a long ramble through the dense encumbered woods I emerged upon a
smooth meadow full of sunshine like a lake of light, about a mile and a
half long, a quarter to half a mile wide, and bounded by tall arrowy
pines. The sod, like that of all the glacier meadows hereabouts, is made
of silky agrostis and calamagrostis chiefly; their panicles of purple
flowers and purple stems, exceedingly light and airy, seem to float
above the green plush of leaves like a thin misty cloud, while the sod
is brightened by several species of gentian, potentilla, ivesia,
orthocarpus, and their corresponding bees and butterflies. All the
glacier meadows are beautiful, but few are